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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320521">aesthete</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/akinasperanza/pseuds/akinasperanza'>akinasperanza</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>words like honey [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky is pretty much just a mention but I thought I'd throw it in there, Gen, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, basically an excuse for an art history student to be a nerd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:49:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,311</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320521</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/akinasperanza/pseuds/akinasperanza</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers was a fish out of water, a square peg in a round hole.<br/>A man out of time.</p><p>Or, Steve has never felt so lost, but he's working on adjusting as best as he can given the circumstances.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>words like honey [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755751</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>aesthete</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the first part of a 50 part writing project I've been planning for a while now. Each chapter is inspired by a word, and is entirely unconnected from the previous. It started out as a way to look for beauty in isolation, and I hope that even just one of you reading will find comfort in it while the world continues to suffer through this.</p><p>Together, we can come out the other side of this stronger than ever. Good luck, my doves.</p><p>- Akina</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>New York had changed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steve wasn’t used to confronting that which he couldn’t fight. Back-alley brawls and Prisoner of War Camps were things which he could face head-on, black and white, win or lose. For the first time, standing surrounded by vibrant moving screens and scores of people, Steve was not confronted by a playground bully or a German soldier. He was confronted by a </span>
  <em>
    <span>concept</span>
  </em>
  <span>, by </span>
  <em>
    <span>time</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and it was something he couldn’t fight back against.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In three weeks, Steve had been forced to adjust to a life he never thought he’d live. He spent a great deal of time wandering through the streets, examining each alleyway and storefront that he remembered as if it were only yesterday, though it was less like looking into the past and more like looking into a future Steve shouldn’t have been privy to. A great deal had changed more than stayed the same, and nothing felt familiar anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was a fish out of water, a square peg in a round hole.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A man out of time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In an ideal world, a world without war, Steve would have become an artist. It’s a truth he once laughed at, when Bucky first suggested it as an alternative to signing up to fight, but in a month living in a future which Bucky would have loved to see, Steve had spent many sleepless nights thinking about what he could have done differently; what his life would have been like if he hadn’t of met the Doctor who changed his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(</span>
  <em>
    <span>“At least consider it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I can’t, Buck. Not when I can do as well as any of them.”</span>
  </em>
  <span>)</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Steve still had to get the hang of navigating the landscape around him, but thankfully, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was still standing just as sturdy as it had seventy years earlier. The future had allowed the museum to grow, and Steve spent half of his time simply trying to find the room he was looking for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Van Gogh’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Irises</span>
  </em>
  <span>, while understated, was a painting that Steve had come to admire during his time adjusting to the new world he was living in. The Dutchman had been residing in an asylum as he created the masterpiece, based upon the sights he could see through the windows, and while Steve supposed that you could look at the piece and grant it meaning through the idea that the nature of the outside inspired Van Gogh to heal in order to see them up close, Bucky had once sat on the floor of Steve’s bedroom reading from a book of the language of flowers in order to impress Florence “Flo” Powell, and so Steve had a far greater knowledge of the power of the meaning of the purple blooms than many. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Van Gogh had, subconsciously or otherwise, painted hope while he lived in a world devoid of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the Dutch artist, the flowers would have a way for him to escape the confines of his world and to imagine the space beyond, where he could be anyone and do anything, free of the cage he had found himself trapped within.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For Steve, the painting he stood before represented both his past and his future in equal measure; his past confined to Brooklyn, rejection letter after rejection letter weighing down the pocket of his threadbare coat as the world refused to let him be free, and his future, where he now stood, trapped within a world that was not his own and which no longer needed a captain.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Some time later, Steve was caught off guard as the waitress returned into view, the steam rising from the fresh coffee mug as she placed it on the table in front of him. He thanked her with a nod and a smile before turning back to the window, marred by the streaked rain and fogged with heat, while he twirled the pencil between his fingers and tapped it </span>
  <em>
    <span>tap tap tap</span>
  </em>
  <span> against the corner of the sketchbook laid open before him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steve had known, as he ducked out of the rain into the small cafe, finding himself engrossed in the paper in front of him as the lead spilled out across the page, that he could never </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> capture the hope Van Gogh had conveyed in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Irises</span>
  </em>
  <span> in his own rendition. Part of the symbolism was the colour, the vibrant purple and blue of the petals, which was something that silvery lead could never hope to replicate, though in many ways Steve felt it was an appropriate deviance as he leaned back in his chair, casting a critical eye over the page.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t tell whether he’d re-created the work in order to depict his hope or use Van Gogh’s for himself, but Steve knew that he had not yet reached a content point in this new world he was surrounded by. He was on the road to positive thinking, but in many ways Steve felt as if he was living in his own time only weeks beforehand. Any soldier, no matter how “super”, would have difficulty adjusting to an entirely new reality, and that was precisely what Steve had been forced to try and do. The grey of his own </span>
  <em>
    <span>Irises</span>
  </em>
  <span> reflected that, while there was an </span>
  <em>
    <span>impression</span>
  </em>
  <span> of hope in his future, Steve had not yet reached the pinnacle where he was willing to accept the emotion into his heart and mind, no matter how much Nicholas Fury deemed himself capable of trying to “adjust” Steve to the world as quickly as possible.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The coffee had long gone cold by the time Steve snapped himself out of his reverie, but he still stayed a few moments longer in order to gulp it down before he packed the sketchbook and his trusty pencil into the satchel he carried and exited the cafe, the bell ringing out behind him as stepped out into the overcast New York streets. The sky was blanketed in dark clouds, though the rain had softened from a deluge to a peaceful pattering as the sidewalk glistened in the rectangular patch of light casting itself wide out of the window he had been sitting at moments earlier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steve jostled his way through the foot traffic until he was able to cross the street at the intersection, the tree-lined path he now walked on providing more than enough coverage from the weather for him to reach the small apartment which Fury (</span>
  <em>
    <span>“call me Nick”</span>
  </em>
  <span>) had set up for him as he reacquainted himself with his city.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time Steve had reached the aforementioned apartment, his coat was only the slightest touch damp and it had practically dried itself by the time he was closing the door behind him, dropping the satchel onto the nearest seat. The inside of his apartment was, in many ways, a reflection of the drawing tucked inside his bag—leeched of colour and the sense of its purpose, but with enough potential to build upon as time went by. The concept of </span>
  <em>
    <span>home</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for Steve, had long been a person rather than a place; first his mother, and then Bucky, and though Steve was fond of his city the state of his apartment never really gave a sense of home in the way he thought it was supposed to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t used to the idea that he was now alone in a world unfamiliar. Unfamiliar scenery and unexplored territory were as natural to Steve as breathing, he was a soldier through and through. And yet, Steve stood in his apartment, the echo of a long-dead Dutch painter, filled with thoughts of the idea of hope and yet not as ready to embrace it as his counterpart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>New York had changed, but Steve had changed too, and it was only a matter of time until he discovered whether it was for better or for worse.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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